


no hay escudo

by iimpavid, scarebeast



Series: transmogrification [5]
Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Awkward Conversations, Backstory, Hannibal Season 4, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Medical Procedures, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Psychic Abilities, Sailing, Sick Character, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-01
Updated: 2018-09-01
Packaged: 2019-07-05 06:37:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15858234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iimpavid/pseuds/iimpavid, https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarebeast/pseuds/scarebeast
Summary: "What're you doin' up?""Kinetosis," Hannibal answered, hoarse. "I... have never sailed before.""Y’can't just say you're seasick, can you? The Chesapeake Ripper, sufferin’ motion sickness.""The Chesapeake Ripper is, regrettably, a human being."





	no hay escudo

**Author's Note:**

> If you've found yourself here by mistake, welcome! We encourage you to start reading the series [from the beginning.](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1094898)
> 
> The title, as with other episodes in the series, comes from the Pablo Neruda poem, [Waltz](https://spanishpoems.blogspot.com/2005/05/pablo-neruda-vals.html). This particular line, "there is no shield" struck iimpavid as appropriate. 
> 
> Please be advised: there's a fairly detailed description of nausea and vomiting after the first section of this episode; it's related to the seasickness mentioned in the summary. Neither one of us knows a damn thing about sailing or medicine outside of what Google can provide, so please suspend your disbelief.

__1990_ _

_Will is ten years old the first time his father spends a weekend out on the bayou with him fishing. It’s the first time his dad has ever brought him along and Will is excited. Happy to spend time with his father outside of staring at each other over the dinner table with empty expressions because Hank Graham doesn’t know how to talk to his son._

_They listen to whatever Will wants the whole way there-- which happens to be hair metal and synth pop that he won’t revisit in the future except through the supermarket radio. They don’t talk much and when they do it’s to decide that they both need to stop for a bathroom break or that Hank needs to pull over and sleep for a couple of hours. Sally, their border collie, makes enough noise for the both of them, panting over Will’s shoulder from the truck’s busted-out back window and barking at all the animals she could see or smell or hear outside the safety of the truck’s bed._

_It should be scary, going so deep into the swamp where every floating branch seemed reptilian and Spanish moss fell in thick curtains from cypress trees, obscuring daylight and drinking up sound… but it didn’t. He knew dad had a special spot, one that he and Will’s mother had liked to visit. Hank wants to share it with Will, too. The sun cutting just so through the treetops to the heart of the fishing hole and at sunset all the swimming fireflies. It's the most peaceful place in the world._

_Will isn't sure how he remembers that about a place he's never been but like all things he accepts it._

_It turns out to be one of the best road trips, second only to their move to New Orleans. He was too young at the time to remember much more other than a McDonald’s playground smelling of hot plastic and being allowed to eat himself sick on M &M’s for hours._

_The cabin cost five months’ worth of savings to rent. (Will doesn’t know how he knows that either.) They only unpack what they need for the night and go straight to bed, Hank on the bed proper, Will on the sofa._

_He wonders what happened to make things like this. He wonders what’s wrong with him that his own dad_ won’t hardly speak to him. _Dad tries and he knows it’s not dad’s fault._

 _The next day_ _is easier._

_The next day Hank teaches him to fish._

_Fishing is quiet like nothing else. There's only the soft lapping of the water against their boat and the cicadas and the birds. Will doesn’t have to think about what to say and Hank doesn’t have to tell him a thing other than how to assemble a lure properly and when Will tries it himself— it's got an order and requires steady hands and it soothes his nerves. And like everything else he tries, he picks it up quick. Hank is so proud to see it._

_Will’s chest swells with the feeling, his father’s pride and their shared joy._

_It’s the first time he realizes that whatever else this thing of his might be, this lens in him that absorbs and magnifies the frustration, anger, and sadness of everyone else in the world, it might have something good to it too._

_Will catches several small fish. His father shows him how to release them safely, tells him,_ Sometimes, you have to let them go. That they deserve that, to grow and live and thrive. _When Hank shows him the fish they're going to keep, he doesn't tell Will why they're the ones that are going to die and be eaten. Will knows it's something to do with them being on the top of the food chain and all of that but he can't help but wonder why_ they _get to decide what lives and dies. He doesn't ask dad about it but it keeps him up at night for years to come._

 _Hank won't let him watch when he kills the fish. There's some dark, angry part of Will that wants to protest that he isn't a baby, he can handle watching the light go out in a living being, he isn't_ scared _\- but when he hears the crack of the fish skulls behind him, he covers his ears and tries not to throw up. He is scared. It's an uncomprehending fear of the unfathomable dryness and suffocation and the blur of being held still by a thing too big to even start to see--_

_Hank won't let him watch. It's one of the only times in his life where Hank will understand him completely._

_When they get back to the cabin, Will starts on the gumbo, the only recipe he and his father have been able to perfect. They're both not very good at cooking but Will is marginally better at it, so he handles the stove, and his father guts the fish._

_Will stares and stares until Hank offers him the knife._

_"It's easy," his father says. Will stops stirring the gumbo and reaches out hesitantly._

_"Are you sure?"_

_"It's important to learn. If you like eating fish." Hank pauses. "If you like fishing," he amends._

_"I think I do."_

_"Okay. Okay. Let me show you then."_

_He hates it. He hates every second of it, every step they take to open the fish up and remove its organs, gill it, fillet it, and put it in the pot. His hands are red, red, red, red, red. He didn't kill the fish, but he would swear on a stack of bibles he can feel bones crack and give beneath his hands in his memory and that the fish, when he slices its belly open with careful fingers, is still alive._

_"See?" Hank says. "See? It's easy."_

* * *

 

**March 27**

Leaving port, Hannibal knew at once that he had overextended himself. Will set their course aboard the cabin cruiser with expertise, although it was clear that he would have preferred a different ship to the one they’d bought. The virtues of Craigslist and PayPal were to be extolled unto the ends of the earth-- but Will took issue with the subpar engine, the cheap construction. This would be the one place in life where Will fretted over quality.

He woke up in the small hours of the morning in a cold sweat with the distinct sensation that the cabin’s lone bed was spinning out of control.

He sat up and the tumbling sensation took on a pulsing quality. He salivated heavily and his stomach lurched and he was all but swallowed by the dread of nausea. He heaved himself to his feet and kept a hand on the wall to steady himself on his way to the tiny, shuttered bathroom.

Every convulsion of his stomach and esophagus pulled at the stitches in his belly and back. One wrenched loose from his skin with a sickening sensation of release. He pressed his hand hard into it, breathing heavily through his mouth and hating every moment that he tasted his own bile. A taste made worse, still, in combination with the standing water of the toilet, the sour acrylic of the boat itself, the faint mildew of the shower tile, the damned dog that had gotten up to investigate his late-night suffering.

He didn’t acknowledge Will as he nudged Holly out of the bathroom doorway with one foot. On impulse, Will pressed a hand to Hannibal's back and knelt behind him. Mumbled around a yawn, "What're you doin' up? Infection?"

Will had woken up in his own world of hurt, something to do with the hole in the side of his face, probably, and been seized immediately by the fact of being alone. It was a sort of sleepy terror that he couldn't fight off, the thought that Hannibal might have wandered off to die alone somewhere like a wounded animal. An insistent ache in his throat and gut that made him freeze, until he heard the sound of retching and followed it like a beacon.

He leaned into Will's touch, an animal instinct he couldn't control any more than he could find equilibrium on the open ocean. Against the chill of his back Will's hand was an expanse of heat and the only still point in the world.

"Kinetosis," he answered, hoarse. "I... have never sailed before."

Holly took her cue from Will, clambering over the both of them to sit in the bathroom too, half in shower and half in Will's lap, her head shoved into Hannibal’s side. She panted up into Hannibal's face and he retched again, dry heaving and spitting a mouthful of saliva. His sinuses burned enough to make his eyes water. The combination of stomach acid and the remnants of that afternoon’s lunch were positively vile.

He curled his lip and pushed her head away. She licked at his hand. He wiped it dry on her fur then left his hand there, rubbing a thumb over her neck.

Will settled more comfortably on the floor and leaned forward to press his forehead against the solid plane of Hannibal's back. Delirium-- from pain, from empathy-- had him lightly stroking Hannibal’s flank as he laughed. "Y’can't just say you're seasick, can you? The Chesapeake Ripper, sufferin’ motion sickness." His sleepy drawl was full of fond humor.

"The Chesapeake Ripper is, regrettably, a human being. Did we bring Dramamine?"

"I don’t-- I didn't even think about it." He wasn’t quite apologetic. He’d grown up on the water-- the ocean and lakes, rivers and swamps-- motion sickness was something that happened to other people. It was only natural to lean into Hannibal. "We'll get you your sea legs. It'll take a week, maybe, but you'll get 'em."

This was their little family now, crowded into the bathroom commiserating with a dog still vying for attention. It was almost funny.

“A week,” he said, injecting the word with all the venom he could muster. Hannibal let himself make a wretched, petulant noise. The point of no return in relation to his dignity had come and gone the moment Will sat down with him.

The dog sighed and rearranged herself to lean more heavily into the both of them. It was meant to be a comforting gesture, a response most well-socialized dogs had to human discomfort. Hannibal couldn’t say for certain he was comforted but, with Will breathing steadily at his back and his stomach finally empty, he didn’t feel worse.

"A week," Will repeated, nodding against Hannibal's back and immediately regretting it; even protected by bandaging and expertly stitched too much head movement made his face flare with pain. He shifted, pushing Holly off of him and climbed to his feet, curling his fingers around Hannibal's bicep. "C'mon. Let's get you some water an’ back t’bed."

Hannibal complained under his breath, something that Will couldn’t catch that sounded suspiciously like “sadist” before he rose on unsteady feet. He insisted on brushing his teeth first, one hand braced against the sink and his eyes closed against the spiraling room.

The bedding had acquired a chill— they both sweated terribly in their discomfort; they would need to buy more sheets and probably burn these— but Hannibal collapsed onto the mattress with a shade of gratitude anyway. He would simply grow accustomed to the damp in favor of the comfort of not being upright. The dampness beneath his bandages was, he hoped, only lymph fluid and sweat. His sinuses had not yet recovered sufficiently to determine either he was bleeding without taking the time to look.

“You’re due two Percocet,” he told Will, remembering suddenly, “Take them with food or we'll both be this useless.”

Will wasn't particularly hungry, but he wanted to vomit with a hole in his cheek even less, so he made his way into the tiny galley to heat up some soup. Holly followed him out, her paws a comforting patter against the flooring, and he ran his good hand over her back as he waited. She was probably the softest, sweetest dog he’d ever met.

He thought it was delightful to see Hannibal so vulnerable. If that made him a sadist, so be it. Hannibal had watched, had encouraged Will losing his mind when his brain was on fire and reality had become only a flimsy veil. This felt fair. Felt _just._

After, he took two glasses of water and the stolen Percocet back to the bed and sat down next to Hannibal. Hannibal, who had turned onto his left side and was very nearly in a fetal position. Will’s weight shifting the bed made him wince.

"I brought you a gift."

Hannibal levered himself upright only enough to accept the Dramamine Will had uncovered and swallow them dry, leaving bitter and acrid residue down the back of his tongue that confirmed that they were, in fact, the right medication. Will was beautifully clever and never wholly above suspicion. “Better than Christmas.”

Will snorted and swallowed his own pills, leaning against the wall behind them. The pain in his cheek was starting to radiate throughout his head, and he knew the Percocet would take care of it soon, but for now, he was going to be miserable and awake and he might as well settle in to wait.

"You, getting seasick. God, Hannibal. Have you ever even been sick in your entire life?"

Hannibal answered as if by rote, “Often. As a child, I had an unfortunate tendency toward excessively high fevers and secondary infections.”

Will's eyes slid shut. There was the dark of the open water behind them and it was better than the close dark of the cabin, a better place for rambling in. "You even feel it when Francis shot you? You got back up an’tore his throat out. Do you just grit your teeth and bear it? God, you’ve gotta helluva pain tolerance; no wonder nothing slows you down."

“I make a habit of not starting fights I can’t finish,” Hannibal corrected.

He extended a hand to Will, trusting him to turn on the light to see what was intended— the faintest scars on his fingertips, a couple more around his knuckles, a perforated line down his palm of ghostly puncture wounds healed to the size of pinheads. He nearly startled when Will took his hand. Stretching out his fingers to examine the history there, running his thumb down Hannibal’s palm and tracing fingertips against the site where, memorably, he’d nearly amputated his own index finger as a teething toddler.

“I’ve never felt pain. My mother’s willingness to force me to spend much of my early development with mittens tied onto my hands is the reason I still have hands; I didn’t learn that the smells of blood and infection were cause for alarm until I was almost six.”

All at once Will could see it: young Hannibal with no knowledge or concept of hurting, somewhat perplexed by his bleeding skin and the raw meat beneath it but mostly aware that he shouldn’t be spilling anything on the Lecter estate’s wooden floors. Approaching his mother with his wounded hands held before him like a gift. His tutor would wander the woods, lost for the route home, for another hour-- and the sound of his mother’s controlled distress. Her blurred, unknowable face still somehow concerned as she cleans his wounds, stitching up the punctures wide enough to warrant stitching, then sliding leather-padded mittens onto his hands, telling him to take more care.

It was a testament to how clever and careful Hannibal was that he had made it this far in life without maiming himself. "You were so different, all your life," Will mused.

“Statistically-speaking,” Hannibal conceded, “but I was no more isolated than I wished to be.”

"Sorry," Will said quietly chagrined at the sudden knowledge of Hannibal’s irritation. He let go of Hannibal’s hand as if he were giving it back to him, settling it on his chest. There was a deep exhaustion that he couldn't parse the origin of underlying them both. "I’m sorry-- I’ll let you sleep."

“Do not apologize for your curiosity, Will, it is a virtue.” Still, he was more satisfied to lay there in silence, breathing through each overwhelming rock of the boat until sleep drew him under.

* * *

 

**April 2**

The second sloop provided them with somewhat more space, meaning they could in some places stand abreast below deck and had the luxury of separate beds. Still, it had bare inches of headroom and the two of them were, below deck, always on verge of tripping over each other. The package Hannibal set onto the galley’s small table, wrapped with butcher paper and twine and otherwise an unassuming rectangular prism, took up most of the space available on the minuscule table. He had had a productive day at port, relishing the opportunity to be on solid, stable ground and do some shopping even if he had found himself swaying somewhat when he meant to stand still.

“I bought you something.”

Will had watched him from the corner of his eye the moment he came below deck, abandoning a crossword that hadn’t been occupying his attention anyway. Killing Francis felt months in the past. His cheek was still a colorful palette of bruising that had only just begun to retreat under careful application of anti-inflammatories and frozen peas. Hannibal still refused to let him eat wholly solid food while his mouth healed. His shoulder was a persistent tight ache, though he forewent the sling Hannibal insisted upon at every turn.

He leaned forward in his seat, arching an eyebrow and staring warily at the package. Nothing in Hannibal’s face betrayed what it might be. “It’s common courtesy to wrap things that aren’t meat in actual wrapping paper so the giftee doesn’t assume that it’s meat-- or in your case, long pig—oh.”

He frowned. The life vest was hideous, an eye-bending shade of magenta with reflective striping, and for a moment Will was irrationally angry-- then he realized who it was for.

“You bought our dog a life vest.”

“Swimming keeps her out from underfoot.” Holly presently sprawled in the middle of the cabin’s excuse for a living space, taking up all nearly all the available foot room. “Now you no longer need to worry that she will drown in the current.”

It occurred to Will quite suddenly and clearly that Hannibal hadn't done this for the sake of the dog.

He knew he had Hannibal on some kind of leash. _Not a leash. A **lead.**_

Will could tighten the lead around Hannibal's neck, apply pressure, and receive the desired outcome. It was dangerous because there were, always, two ends to the connection. He might find himself with the lead around his own neck or a knife in his gut again-- yet here Hannibal was, trying to… accomplish something. On its surface, the desire to give Will peace of mind seemed sincere.

He filed the knowledge away. Gave Hannibal a bright smile. "Swimming keeps her from drooling on your books, you mean. It's great. She'll love it."

“My motivations were somewhat less than altruistic but I think Holly will find it in her heart to forgive me.” Rather than dig his thumb into the edges of Will’s bruising perception he busied himself in the galley. The foreseeable future would see a great amount of grilled fish in their diet; for tonight he thought a bouillabaisse broth would go swimmingly with the bass Will reeled before they docked.

“Tell me, Will,” he said, beginning to dice tomatoes and onion for the stew, “how is your shoulder? It’s been almost two weeks; you’ll need to have the stitches out.”

There would be little opportunity for more careful medical care once they abandoned their shoebox-sized sloop. In the coming days, they would either acquire a car then, after an agreeable amount of distance and time on service roads through rural counties, steal another boat and continue their journey south. The whole process would repeat as often as necessary until they reached international waters. It was far slower than Hannibal preferred to travel but bereft of all identifying documents and only equipped with the money Chiyoh could gather on short notice from the family accounts, they had to make do.

"It feels better, I guess. We can do it later tonight if you want,” as if either of them had anything else to be doing. “What about my face?"

He knew Hannibal had knocked him out to do some kind of emergency dentistry; jabbed him in the neck with a syringe when he turned away from dinner for half a second on the second night at the forest house. When Hannibal had taken up dentistry was beyond him; he didn’t particularly want to know the details. He remembered only waking up with smooth, swollen gums where jagged edges of broken teeth had been-- he was only down two molars, mercifully.

Hannibal wiped his hands on the flour sack towel draped over his shoulder and leaned down to inspect it. Tilted Will’s head gently to the side with a finger.

“Yes, I think they can stand to be removed. Have those in your gums fallen out of their own accord?” The urge to take Will’s jaw and simply probe the inside of his mouth for himself— to determine how the wound scoring across his tongue was healing, to feel the new scar tissue of his cheek from the inside with bare fingertips, to trace the places in his gumline that were now soft and empty— arose and departed with sudden discomfort.

Apprehensive at Hannibal’s look, he said, "A couple of ‘em have." There was a sick anticipation in Will’s stomach as Hannibal retreated to the kitchen and he swallowed hard around it. "Why did you decide to become a surgeon anyway?"

The subject change didn’t unbalance Hannibal in the slightest.

“I suppose I could tell you that it’s useful to know the anatomy of an animal if you intend to have any skill at butchering it.” He smiled to himself and began deveining the shrimp that would join their bass with nimble fingers and the sharp tip of a paring knife. “It was intoxicating work. This may come as a shock to you, Will, but I am not tolerant of failure, particularly my own. The act of preserving life is, in many ways, the very pinnacle of human success. This is also why I ultimately retired to psychiatry. But, come, you already knew this-- ask me something better.”

"You tried to eat my brain," he started, expression going flat as he brought the memory to the forefront easily. "Brains aren't exactly the healthiest cut of meat, you know-- and now we're... here."

“Only if the brain in question is infected with a prion disease; you have anti-NDMA encephalitis, not Creutzfeldt-Jakob or kuru. Your central nervous system is perfectly safe for human consumption.”

Knowing Will would continue probing until he found satisfaction (or else some flaw in Hannibal that he could not reconcile with his morality), he willingly followed the tacit line of inquiry. “I had deluded myself. You— the meat of you, your brain, your mind, your continued existence— acquired a talismanic quality by the time I reached Florence. I wanted desperately to believe that if I ate you then I could finally be free of this _desiderata_ and could take up the comfortable track of my life once again free of preoccupation... It was, as I said, a delusion.”

Made again, but this time with a few more grains of truth, the confession sat heavy in Hannibal’s stomach.

Will imagined they were in Hannibal’s Baltimore kitchen full of familiar smells and without the nearby bustle of port, never quite quiet at the docks and always humming with the close proximity of others. He made adjustments to his mental palace’s floorplan to account for the dramatic difference in size and spacing and for all the odd spatial gymnastics this required, the illusion held and Will found himself grounded in it.

“Interesting that you of all people would succumb to a delusion like that.”

The idea that he might hear disappointment at his weakness in Will’s voice did not slot well in with the fantasy he had constructed around their possible future. Hannibal acknowledged the discomfort and set the beginnings of the stew heating on the stove. Will enjoyed the opportunity to stare unchallenged.

Hannibal was feeding him piecemeal: their shared reality and Hannibal’s own custom-tailored version of it.

“I was going to try to kill you, right before Chiyoh shot me,” Will said conversationally. “Did you know that?”

“You did drop your knife in the square. Why would you choose such a public place? I did not take you for an exhibitionist.”

“I’m not… I wanted to get you before you had the chance to get me. I didn’t want to be alone in a room with you. I didn’t want to hear anything you had to say to me, because none of it would have been enough or it wouldn’t have been right, and I didn’t want to change my mind about you again.”

“Rather than revise your expectations you found killing me in public preferable.” The noise he made was distinctly curious. “What would you have done to amuse yourself in prison? Or would you have run after?”

“I didn’t plan that far ahead. From the moment I got on my boat, my only plan was to find you. I still didn’t know what I wanted to do with you when I did until I saw you in the gallery.”

“I’ve never known _Primavera_ to inspire such impulses myself but I suppose you saw something quite different in it. Did anything, in particular, make up your mind?.”

“There are a thousand things that could have happened when I walked into that gallery up to and including you deciding to murder me on the spot. I had to give myself some kind of edge."

"It gave you quite the edge indeed. But you know better, Will; I am not an exhibitionist either. I prefer more intimate settings for my work." Hannibal’s lips curled into the suggestion of a smile then he grew serious just as quickly. He would never be done apologizing for some things; could not allow himself to be done apologizing for them lest he forget. "I blame you for nothing, Will. My past carelessness with your life is regrettable in the extreme."

Will studied him. “It was when you said my name. It was with the same.... timbre as when you told me to wade into the stream. You said my name and I knew what you wanted to do to me.”

“It grieved me to think I had to kill you. Placing a bounty on my head was the only useful act Mason Verger committed in his life.” The memory of Verger's new money arrogance and the incompetence of his insouciant butcher brought a foul taste to the back of Hannibal's tongue. It was a shame that Margot's wellbeing so heavily hinged upon killing her brother.

"Would you have eaten me when you were done or left me to rot?"

Will wasn’t sure what the noise that came out of his throat was; something small and maybe wounded, certainly desperate. “I would have wanted to eat you; you’d’ve done the same. It’d’ve felt right.”

Again came the sensation of unspooling in Hannibal’s chest. He stood in the galley and made himself endure it. Will would, without trying, unravel the very last of him, and he would be grateful for it every step of the way.

“That gives me a great sense of peace,” he said because it was important to him that Will understand: _he could not bear to imagine himself buried like offal._ “Thank you.”

Will cleared his throat and swallowed and found a wry smile to give him. “You don’t have to worry about that if you die. Before me. Pinky promise.”

**

The fishing line stitches in Will’s cheek were only visible for the depressions they made in the scar-forming, a neat set of tracks only twelve ties long. With gloved hands, Hannibal adjusted Will’s head in the light, gentle touches to his jaw. The scar was healing nicely, hypertrophic and pink but not as restrictive or distinctive as it might be.

Using sterilized tweezers he pulled up each knot and snipped the thread left-handed, then a gentle pull at delicate flesh by steady hands to slither each stitch from the new, tender scar tissue. Again and again. Methodical and patient. Not only for the sake of thoroughness but to savor the deep satisfaction of releasing a wound to complete its healing.

Smoothing butterfly bandages onto Will’s cheek, Hannibal finally spoke, voice soft, “Would you prefer that I see to your gums or your chest next?”

Will sat still as a deer in headlights, might continue to do so if Hannibal hadn’t spoken to him. There was nothing clinical about Hannibal Lecter's hands on him. The intimacy was unbearable. Hannibal wore gloves but Will could imagine what it would feel like to be touched by Hannibal like this without a barrier of latex between them. It was like standing out in the cold for too long and coming inside and feel his whole body burning. The sheer discomfort of Hannibal's hands on him was only outweighed, only made acceptable, by the fact that Will had waited for Hannibal to touch him this carefully for a very long time.

"Uh. Gums." That would give him more time to get his heart rate under control.

"Then open your mouth, please."

There were only a handful of stitches left on the warm, damp interior of Will's mouth. Hannibal angled him carefully to catch the light of the desk lamp. The stitch in his upper gum tore at his skin, just slightly. A minute pinprick of blood assimilated into saliva as Will reflexively swallowed. It interfered, somewhat, with his work, each minute movement of throat and tongue, but Hannibal was nothing if not willing to wait.

"I have yet to thank you, Will, for the opportunity to gain a practical understanding of dentistry. Until recently my knowledge was purely theoretical."

Will might have tried to respond, made some kind of affronted, token protest at the new information, but he was seized by a thought: he could simply close his teeth around Hannibal’s fingers and bite down. Maim those steady hands with less force than was required to snap a carrot and drink their tips down on a deluge of blood. He kept his head tilted just so and tasted latex and the faintest hint of his own blood and relish the thought.

The bloody, tiny knots of fishing line were laid out on clean gauze in a tidy row. Hannibal delighted in seeing them. "Experience is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the best teacher."

Released from Hannibal’s hands, Will poked his tongue into the empty spaces where his molars used to be-- he was down two-- feeling how strange it was to be aware of the emptiness. Despite the ache, the urge to explore the gaps with his tongue was constant.

He sipped at the water Hannibal handed him and said nothing.

The human mouth was a hotbed of disease and there was no point in taking an unnecessary risk; Hannibal changed his gloves once again, snapping them on with something of a habitual flourish. "Your shirt, if you would."

Will stripped without ceremony.

The effort to breathe, to not hold his breath in anticipation as Hannibal touched him, was monumental. He palpated the area around the healing wound with cool, careful fingers, leaving behind a lingering sensation of heat. Hannibal was trying not to touch more than necessary but was tempted so sorely to explore and press and maybe hurt, just a little, just to see Will’s response. His restraint was always under assault.

Will broke out in goosebumps.

Francis' knife had caught up against Will's first few ribs, an auspicious acute angle that avoided a lung puncture by narrow grace. The surface, though, had closed well, without swelling or excessive redness. The scar would form a keloid emdash of emphasis across Will's pectoralis major below the puncture of Chiyoh’s bullet. Will endured the sensation of stitches’ minute movement skittering beneath his skin with the same acceptance as he had Hannibal’s prodding about his mouth; it was a welcome distraction.

"If I didn't know any better, I'd think people were trying to take off my right arm," Will joked, voice coming out far rougher than he'd expected. He cleared his throat. He seemed to be doing that a lot lately, finding his mouth dry and words wanting. "Stabbed when I was a cop, shot by Chiyoh. Now, this."

“I understand why they might want a piece of you, but I am afraid you won’t be eligible for any kind of amputation in the near future. You are remarkably resilient.”

He pressed butterfly closures over the wound then taped gauze over them. The reinforcement would not hurt given Will’s tendency to overextend himself; the excuse to continue touching him was a secondary benefit.

Will laughed a little. "How reassuring."

He looked up from his shoulder and was startled to realize how close they sat, Hannibal’s knees bracketing his. That wouldn't have been such an issue-- Hannibal tended to close in on Will's space every chance it got-- if it weren’t for how dark Hannibal's eyes had bloomed.

Will swallowed a few times, throat dry and clicking, looking back down to where Hannibal’s fingers lingered on his chest.

"Bedelia told me you were in love with me," he blurted and then felt as though he were going to throw up. So much for playing dirty. He hadn’t meant to do this ever but certainly not now.

“Did she? Bedelia is a dear friend of mine but she presumes much. You seem wholly uncomfortable with the thought that I might be in love with you— do you think me incapable of love or that you are incapable of being loved?”

"Bedelia isn't the only one that's presumptuous." Will rolled his eyes. He’d have leaned back if there were anywhere to go. Deflection made him impatient and he was tempted to get up and walk out of the conversation completely, to take Holly for another walk before they left town in the morning.

But that was petty. Holly was already asleep for the night. It was unfair to wake her up to make a point

"If anyone could love me, it’d be you. I do know you, Hannibal. You've let me see you, remember?"

“How could I forget?” His eyes narrowed. Reflecting Will’s irritation was reflexive. Reactionary. Rude. “You know better than anyone that even intelligent psychopaths experience only shallow affect interspersed with impulsive periods of parasitism through manipulation.” Hannibal’s jaw worked, just a fraction of a movement belying the tendency to snap unprovoked.

He sat back. Schooled his features into placidity. The foundationless anger he had stumbled upon had no place here. This conversation was, objectively and existentially, vital. He tried again:

“I can’t tell you whether I am capable of love, Will; I have no basis for comparison. Obsession, jealousy, penitence, schadenfreude, enmeshment, worship— these, I am capable of and have felt for you. Often, all of them at once. However, when put to careful examination, all fall short of or dangerously eclipse the “love” as it is commonly understood.”

Will exhaled, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Relax. I'm just trying figure out exactly what it is you want from me now. Why you still want it. Aren't you satisfied? We killed together. I have... embraced and become what you wanted. What more is there, Hannibal?"

He could guess at the answers-- companionship, more murder, watching Will grow to enjoy his own monstrosity-- but he didn’t want to. There was only so much of a person that could be known before boredom set in. Especially for someone who had a history of flitting from fledgling to fledgling without an actual regard for the person he taught. Will hadn't been the first and, if Hannibal stuck to his habits, he wouldn’t be the last.

“There is no end to what I want from you,” he said, having watched Will twist himself into knots long enough. There it was, at last, the simple truth. One he’d assumed, foolishly, that Will already understood: there was no satisfaction to be had, only the edge of constant hunger.

Will rubbed his sweating palms against his pants and nodded. It really was that simple, wasn't it? And it was what Bedelia had said when he’d asked her if she thought Hannibal was in love with him. He had taken it to mean “yes”.

_Does Hannibal feel a stab of hunger at the very thought of you?_

Will could feel it now. The gnawing within the depths of whatever Hannibal had instead of a soul. An unfathomable void, a black hole, and Will was a star that fed it. What would happen when Will had no more left to give? He supposed they would just have to find out.

Will made his choice.

"Okay. Alright." He shook his head. "But I don't know what all I can give you."

Everything you have and everything left after that. Hannibal thought to reach out to touch him and decided against it. "You are here," he said, "that is ... more than I thought to hope for."

The hunger spiked and Will shut himself off from it immediately.

His wedding ring had ended up at the bottom of the ocean. He wasn't sure anymore if he wouldn't end up down there with it.

* * *

 

**May 21**

Despite the season sailing down the coast of Mexico was smooth, with only the occasional shower when the mid-afternoon heat became too much. Not one of the small port towns that had hosted them had interest in their identities or doings so long as their money was good and they caused no trouble. They spent their days in companionate quiet, occasionally working to adjust course or, more often, at their own tasks, Hannibal reading or writing, Will fishing or indulging in well-earned rest.

A week out from Heroica Veracruz, Holly had made herself at home in the adirondack chair that Hannibal typically sat in to drink his morning tea. Instead, Hannibal stood beside Will, leaning on his elbows against the prow in the rising sun, watching the southern horizon.

"Now that we are free, Will, would you care to discuss your empathy disorder in more depth? You and I both know there is no such diagnosis in medicine or psychology."

Will stared out into the churning sea beyond them. He sighed, curling his fingers around the railing and leaned forward, trying to catch the ocean spray. The small yacht had been Hannibal's idea entirely-- but he had to admit that it was nice to sleep in a real bed, have a real shower, enjoy more than a few inches of headroom. It was bigger than their previous vessels and masted and Will had taken a sadistic delight in giving Hannibal a crash course in proper sailing techniques.

Hannibal was a perfect gentleman the entire time; accepting that first night he hadn’t run short on patience or good cheer once. He kept neurotically tidy, always smelled wonderful, tolerated Holly, and insisted on doing all the cooking. Their conversations had never even bordered on too personal these past few weeks.

Until now, anyway.

The other shoe had to drop sometime.

"Well, that depends, Doctor Lecter. Is this professional curiosity or personal?"

The testiness in Will’s voice was not unexpected and it warmed him to hear it. Hannibal, too, watched the southern horizon rather than Will’s face. Perhaps they would encounter another pod of dolphins today; it would be a delight to draw them again. “Entirely personal, I assure you; I have no professional practice left and, even if I had, I am not inclined to… share your confidences with anyone, whatever they might be. If you do not wish to answer -- we can simply continue to enjoy the morning in companionate quiet.”

"I'm not worried about you betraying my confidence." It came out slightly more defensive than he had intended."I know you wouldn't. I've just... learned not to talk about what I really do." Out of very real fears -- skepticism, mockery, exploitation, professional reputation -- but at this point, he thought he might be able to say anything at all and Hannibal would accept it as fact. _The sky is blue, the earth is round, Will Graham Sees_.

Will closed his eyes, soaking in the rays of the rising sun and inhaling deeply, tasting the salt of the sea on the tip of his tongue. Where could he even start this? With the way he’d screamed as an infant incapable of articulating his father’s grief any other way? The way he would walk by strangers as a child and know their secret grief, joys, rages as if they were written in neon? The way that he dreamt about his father's death weeks in college before the care home called him the morning of to give their condolences? The way he dreamt about Florence, had sought out the ravenstag there, and could feel him anywhere in the world like the compass in Will’s head was oriented toward Hannibal rather than North.

"What do you want to know?"

“Everything,” Hannibal blurted, genuinely surprised to find Will at all forthcoming. He hadn’t planned a line of questioning. “Your… symptoms, if you’ll forgive the pathological terminology, are too regular and seem to have been present for too long in your adult life to simply be a consequence of encephalitis. I’ve had a suspicion for some time that your perception of the world is not limited to that which you can control. What lies outside of your conscious choice to engage with the inner workings of others?”

"The thing about it," Will started, turning to lean his back against the railing and pushing his hands into his pockets. "The thing about it is that I don't know what the limitations are; I haven’t found ‘em yet." He laughed, a bitter sound, and thought back to his dreams, the ones he'd had after the fall. Some he was certain were a product of his own consciousness but the others weren’t. _The sky is blue_. "Do you Rameau? That, uh, piece about the muses."

“ _L’entretien des muses_ is one of his best,” Hannibal answered, though the question as apropos of nothing. “It’s tenderness and persistence rank it among my favorites. He was rather prolific in his composition for harpsichord. What do you know of his work?”

“Yeah, that one. I just know that. Because you told me about it in one of my dreams.” Will pressed his palms against his eyes. “I’ve heard it because something of you played it for me. And you said that you’d always meant to play harpsichord for me, but never had the chance.”

“That is true,” Hannibal conceded, after a momentary pause to gather a response to what Will was implying. “I would relish the opportunity to play for you in the future when the opportunity presents itself. If you’ll allow it.” He thought briefly of the house in Baltimore; Will had seen his harpsichords, both of them, but had he ever left sheet music loose where Will might have found it? Incredibly unlikely. He was never so careless with his belongings. What’s more, he had never granted Will the luxury of wandering the house unaccompanied. “What else have you dreamed of? What facets of others have come to call on your unconscious mind?”

Will hesitated for a moment. He’d known from the start, known for years, that he was going to tell Hannibal things he had never told anyone but this was beyond consideration. How could he talk about something he didn’t want to understand?

"I could tell you about... dreaming of my father telling me he was sorry and that he loved me in the weeks before his death, or when Beverly Katz came to me and told me it wasn't my fault after she died. She was pissed that I thought it was. Or about Abigail Hobbs and all of the times she waded into the stream with me for the company because being dead isn’t all that interesting, I guess." Will shrugged. "Does it make any difference? It's all just dreams. It doesn't matter."

“The human mind has a tendency to seek out patterns where none exist but this does not make the patterns meaningless. They certainly do not seem meaningless to you, or at the very least they are not so easily brushed off in daylight as a dream or nightmare might be. Or am I mistaken?”

"No. You aren't. They bleed from my mind out into the waking world and vice versa. Have you ever really thought about it? How I do what I do? Have you tried to put yourself in my shoes? Become Will Graham?"

“To assume your perspective is nearly impossible, even for a psychopath as high-functioning as myself,” he smirked; the so-called diagnosis Alana had kindly delivered to him was a constant source of bitter humor, “but I have considered it. I seldom experience immersion that might come close to the visions you describe in your waking life… except perhaps during a particularly transcendent aria. Such things are few and far between but you have always been an exception. How is it that you do what you do, Will? I know the results, but not the process of transformation behind it.”

Will tapped his fingers against the yacht's railing. The sun had breached the horizon now, rising just enough that he was considering slipping his sunglasses up onto his ears.

Instead, he closed his eyes and drifted backward because the sound of the sea wasn’t all that different here than it was in Maryland.

"Bellamy Reymeys follows his dog down the beach; he’s been fishing, caught a bunch of trout in a bucket and is proud of himself. He hasn’t been fishing in years. He didn’t have the time as a sheriff. He's not expecting to find two men, waterlogged and injured, washed up on the shore but he doesn't have much time to be surprised. One of them shoots him without hesitation-- and Bellamy still doesn’t understand that he’s dead or why he had to die-- then eats the fish from the bucket raw. He might be dying; he’s desperately hungry without sedatives in his system to keep him unaware of his body’s needs. He carries the unconscious man to his victim's car. It's easy for him to do because he doesn’t feel pain at all-- but that’s not news to you."

The human brain was capable of much, but that level of perception while unconscious was unheard of. Hannibal certainly had revealed nothing of how they came to hide at the forest house for fear of upsetting Will. Occam’s razor: the simplest remaining conclusion was that Will could not be drawing from his own memory.

“ _A good imagination_...” he mused; the descriptor sold Will woefully short. “How much did you withhold from Jack? How did you find the line between what he was looking for and the fantastic truth?”

Will laughed. "Jack didn't care what I said as long as it was something he wanted to hear. I was losing my mind and he didn't care as long as he got what he wanted from me. It didn't matter what I said to him, how I made the leaps in logic. He’d justify anything, as long as we caught the right person."

The fact that no one seemed to want to consider anything other than him having something terribly wrong with his brain had helped. How eager everyone had been to accept that he was mentally ill and capable of terrible things. Which wasn't untrue anymore but the lack of faith in him stung. At the time, if someone had just said to him that he was a good man, he might not have come this way.

"No one was willing to consider any other possibility for what I could do."

"Of course," his disgust was audible, "This cognitive laziness goes beyond reflex; it’s endemic in the population." Jack’s eyes, steamed, would be quite the delicacy. The passing thought diverted him from a black mood and back up into curiosity. "Are these abilities inherited? From your estranged mother's side, perhaps?"

"I don't know." Will's expression went flat. "Didn't know her, don't care to." He released his grip on the railing and turned to Hannibal. "Can we have breakfast now?"

“Of course, Will.”

They would return to the bruise later.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Do y'all love the idea of sleepy!Will slipping into a Southern accent as much as we do? Let us know. And remember, as always, your comments are the lifeblood which sustains us and inspire further madness.
> 
> Stay updated on [pillowfort!](https://pillowfort.io/iimpavid)


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